Johannesburg, South Africa – Early this year, 15 youngsters from the Of Soul and Joy photography programme participated in several workshops with the film education organisation, CinemaTAKE, where they were mentored and taught filmmaking skills – in line with the organisation’s primary goal to provide a platform for creative expression, and foster positive community impact.
By the end of the workshops, the young participants created a breathtaking docu-film ‘Kasi Lama Kasi‘ exploring the subject of filming the world, with an interesting focus on their lived experiences in the vibrant Thokoza township.
The film premiered in June 2024 at the prestigious Cinéma Cent Ans De Jeunesse (CCAJ) film festival in Lisbon, Portugal, where the young filmmakers came together with cinema practitioners and made the most of their cultural exchange experience – which they’ll use to boost their experience level and potentially advance their careers.
The collaboration – between Of Soul and Joy and CinemaTAKE was the first African representation that the CCAJ programme has had since its founding in 1995.
NOWinSA was privileged to be among select media outlets invited to the home screening of ‘Kasi Lama Kasi‘ at the Bioscope Independent Cinema, 44 Stanley Avenue, Milpark in Johannesburg late last month (Friday, September 27), where the 15 participants not only got to showcase three other standout documentaries from the program, but shared some of their profound cinematic experiences.
Not only that, we also got a chance to speak to film director Mpumelelo Mcata, from CinemaTAKE, to unpack the idea behind the organisation – and essentially what it hopes to achieve.
“CinemaTAKE is an organisation that was started by myself as a filmmaker, along with Muriel Huett, who is a French cinema education specialist and Emilie Demon, who is a Franco Japanese gallery owner (Afronova in Newtown, Johannesburg),” Mcata tells NOWinSA multimedia producer Temoso Mokoena, adding: “The two of them got this idea to create a cinema education program because it’s something they’re very passionate about – and then they brought me on board because I’m a filmmaker … and we started working with the youth of Thokoza. So that’s something we do as an association among other things, like host screenings for alternative cinema, especially African cinema that you don’t get to see in commercial spaces.”
Kasi Lama Kasi; objectives and filming process
As one watches the docu-film, what becomes immediately clear is that the 15 youngsters were given creative freedom to not only explore the many exciting possibilities out there, as well as try new things, but also the permission to make mistakes and consequently learn from them.
Explaining the importance of allowing the students the creative freedom they needed, Mcata says: “I think this is critical because when we started working with them, it was to guide them through this program with Cinéma Cent Ans De Jeunesse (CCAJ) in France, which has been running from 1995, which gives young filmmakers around the world – in schools and community projects – a mission to make a short film, which is then shown at a festival where all the kids gather.”
The main thing about the program, he adds, is that the film is supposed to be made by the kids. “So it was kind of a prompt from them, which we learnt we took it more seriously than most other organisations that were involved. So for me, I think the reason is ‘if you really want to find the potential of the kids, if you want to build their confidence, you have to give it over to them’. You have to trust. So the responsibility I think is something that you hand over to build that trust, as opposed to waiting for them to earn it. And it’s the same thing that we would expect as adult artists. It would be my experience as well that as an artist, if I’m working with funders .. if you don’t understand the idea, that’s not really the point. If you’re looking for the potential of breaking a record, changing something, which is the potential that art has, then you really have to hand it over. You have to trust it … and look the person in the eye and go, ‘okay, there it goes’. So I think that’s why we did it.”
